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| Eben Gewers Head of Advertising Sales at the Sunday Times |
Is it okay for South Africa
Scams like this thrive in an economy in which people are
struggling to make ends meet, because they offer a means of making a lot of
money quickly.
In this case one ad was from the impressively named CommEX
Global Corporation Limited Sheung Wan operating out of Dundee
(population 40 000) in Kwazulu Natal.
It offered readers the chance to become rich by investing
in various minerals from coal to iron ore; manganese and dolomite. The
promoters claimed that because of their “long term relationships” with mines
around the world they could buy these minerals at below market price and then
sell them “at a profit.”
The big hearted philanthropists that they are however
didn’t want to keep this profit for themselves. “Now for the first time ever,
that profit can be yours,” they told readers.
For an investment of R57 600 (minimum purchase amount)
you could buy 72 tons of coal which they would then “assist you to sell at a
profit” resulting in you being paid R5624 a month for 18 months. You would thus
almost double your money with R101 232 in the bank at the end of the
period.
It would have been fun, if one had the money and didn’t
mind losing it, to have invested the minimum in coal and told them not to sell
it, but to rather deliver it to their Dundee
premises so you could pick it up. My guess is they had no intention of buying
any minerals at all.
Similar hard to believe returns were given for the other
three minerals.
On 1 September 2019 the CommEx advertising insert appeared
in this Tiso Blackstar owned paper just three days after BusinessLive, the
online business website in the same group exposed CommEx as a Ponzi scheme.
It revealed that the Financial Sector Conduct Authority
(FSCA) was investigating both CommEx Minerals and Coin-It Trading that appeared
to be an allied company, as they were suspected of operating fraudulent schemes
with a high likelihood that investors would lose their money.
FSCA was said to have named Michael Andre Anthony de Beer
as the director of Coin-It and Patricia Ursula de Beer, who was believed to be
his ex-wife, as a director of CommEx Minerals.
Coin-It was promising returns of up
to 200% in only three years by selling trucks to investors, which it would then
use for all kinds of “logistic services relating to transportation and
distribution” to earn the amounts promised.
When FSCA got wind of it
investigators raided the offices of CommEx Minerals as well as the private home
of a former director of Coin-It. A notice outside Coin-It’s premises in the Avon
Industrial Area of Dundee announced that FSCA had closed the business until
further notice.
According to this authority neither firm was licensed to
provide financial services or to receive deposits from the public.
Brandon Topham, a director of investigations and
enforcements at FSCA described Coin-It as showing “hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme.”
In the Sunday Times
of 1 September there was another insert together with the CommEx one. It was
clearly from the same people. Entitled My House it enticed the public to buy a
R335 000 a timber framed, prefabricated house over any period they chose
up to 25 years. Once the full price was paid the house would be built on their
property. It involved: “No Banks, No
Interest, Zero Deposits, No Delay!” they claimed.
On
9 September I sent Topham a copy of the My House advert that was in the Sunday Times and asked if they were also
investigating this.
He
replied: “No we were not, but we are
now.”
A
51 year old divorcee who supports her son, his girlfriend and her 2 year old
grandchild, was one of the many people who lost money after buying trucks through
the Coin-It scheme. When investors started being given excuses as to why their
payments were not being made several Facebook groups were established. They had
various opinions about whether or not Coin-It was legitimate.
“A
person, who wishes to remain anonymous, contacted me and told me to read these
posts,” she told me. “He explained that I had been caught up in a Ponzi scheme.
I didn’t want to believe him, but he had no reason to lie.
“I
realised then that there were no trucks because if you add up all the
membership numbers on the various social media groups there are in excess of
10 000 of them. Then there are those that don’t’ do social media.
“I
am not sure that Dundee could accommodate that
many trucks. The smallest investment was R130 000 and the largest
R500 000.”
All
went well for her in beginning as she was getting her regular monthly payments.
Then cracks began appearing in the scheme before her contract was over, and
between this and another truck she bought on the same basis she lost money.
She
was never given any conclusive evidence that the trucks she bought actually
existed.
See: feisty rowena james
By accepting advertisements for Ponzi schemes like this without taking even the most elementary precautions the Sunday Times was spreading misery just to make money. The paper raked in an estimated R500 000 for the two inserts and if they had gone in its 310 000 copies they would have been seen by and awful lot of people throughout the country.
By accepting advertisements for Ponzi schemes like this without taking even the most elementary precautions the Sunday Times was spreading misery just to make money. The paper raked in an estimated R500 000 for the two inserts and if they had gone in its 310 000 copies they would have been seen by and awful lot of people throughout the country.
This shocking behaviour was compounded by
the editorial side of the paper that clearly does not bite the hand that feeds
it.
After
being told on the phone by Debbie Thompson that she was the advertising manager
of the print side of the Sunday Times
I sent her this email to be fair to her paper by getting it’s side of the story.
In it I asked her the following:
1.
“Does the Sunday Times vet very out of the
ordinary inserts like this, before it agrees to carry them, by looking up the
advertisers on Google for instance?
2.
“Does the Sunday Times ever check with the
authorities to see if firms making offers like this are licensed to conduct
financial services or receive deposits from the public, before it accepts
adverts of this kind?
3.
“The Business
Section of the Sunday Times carries a
warning (nowhere near any advertisements) telling readers to “carefully
scrutinise advertisements offering investment opportunities.” So why does this
warning not appear on the kind of advertising inserts I have mentioned?
4.
“And if the paper
wants readers to scrutinise advertisements of this kind to avoid being had, why
doesn’t the Sunday Times do the same
thing, especially when the claims made in these two inserts were so unlikely to
be fulfilled?”
Instead
of getting a reply from Debbie Thompson I got one from the Head of Advertising
Sales Eben Gewers.
He
told me: “Inasmuch as we try very much to encourage ethical advertising, we
however do not accept any liability nor offer warrantee to the content of paid
ads. We warn readers in all our publications regarding their responsibility to
scrutinise adverts.”
I
replied: “From what you say you don’t take even the most elementary precautions
to ensure that crooks don’t promote their Ponzi schemes in the Sunday Times, which effectively means
this paper aids and abets crooks. I accept that you can’t be blamed for things
that are not right in some advertising, but when you have inserts for the likes
of CommEx and My House, people in an investigative publication like the Sunday Times should be able to recognise
them as suspect.
 |
| These warnings have got less conspicuous over the years. Top is 2010 with bottom the current one that is not even in the main paper, but tucked away in the one corner of Page 2 of the Business section nowhere near any adverts. |
“The Sunday Times clearly doesn’t care if a
Ponzi scheme it advertises destroys thousands of lives as long as it is making money.
“It’s significant too that even though
the On-line business section of your group has exposed these people for what
they are, and so have other publications, the Sunday Times has not mentioned a word of what has happened to these
two Ponzi schemes.
“The
moral to the story seems to be: If you
don’t want your dirty deeds to be exposed in South Africa
I
also asked him to tell me what they did to ‘encourage
ethical advertising.’
My
email to him was dated 15 September. I have not had a reply so I think it is
reasonable to conclude that he did not dispute anything in my email.
Regards,
Jon,
a Consumer Watchdog and self appointed Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman, who fears
that his old paper has really lost its moral compass now.
P.S. From 2010 onwards I campaigned on my blog to get the Sunday Times
to stop carrying get-rich-quick ads. Eventually some years later it appeared to
have stopped this, but not before a lot of lives had been ruined. Then it
lapsed by carrying another one in January this year & I wrote this post.
SUNDAY TIMES AT IT AGAIN WITH TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE ADS No more were featured until these two Ponzi scheme ad inserts appeared. It seems that thousands of people, many of whom were blacks, who could least afford it, were taken for a very expensive ride by the people who were behind these Ponzi schemes. Like so many big businesses all the Tiso Blackstar Group is interested in is making money with the Sunday Times regardless of the ethics of what it does to achieve this.
SUNDAY TIMES AT IT AGAIN WITH TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE ADS No more were featured until these two Ponzi scheme ad inserts appeared. It seems that thousands of people, many of whom were blacks, who could least afford it, were taken for a very expensive ride by the people who were behind these Ponzi schemes. Like so many big businesses all the Tiso Blackstar Group is interested in is making money with the Sunday Times regardless of the ethics of what it does to achieve this.
